June 2009

I don't often post specifically about things I'm involved in at my real job (Head of Library IT at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), and try instead to examine general technology useful to libraries of all types. But this month, I'd like to talk about something that I've been involved in for almost 2 years that has recently come to a head (especially as it concernstechnology). I've spent the better part of the last month hip-deep in planning the technology for UTC's brand new academic library.
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Conference program topics tend to be lagging indicators of the hot topics in a given field.  The lag time develops because it takes time to plan for a professional conference, even an online or in-world conference.  In fact, by the time a molten topic spews forth many conference programs, sometimes even entire conferences, that’s a signal that the magma has started to cool and harden. 

The eBook movement is heating up worldwide, with many major corporations launching eBook services and significant chunks of the worldwide reading public – the Chinese and romance readers come to mind – giving ereading a sustained try.  The paucity of programs about eBooks at next month’s ALA Annual Conference in Chicago could be seen as a case-in-point of this general truth about conference program topics as lagging behind hot topics. Nonethless, I think a different, more troubling dynamic is developing between eBooks, libraries, and librarianship.  I worry about the role that libraries and librarianship will have in the real eBook revolution.  Read More »

Char Booth is a Library Journal Mover and Shaker and one of ALA's Emerging Leaders, and is a voice of growing prominence in the Library Technology community. As the E-Learning Librarian at UC Berkeley, Char works at a unique intersection of technology, advocacy, public service, and education. Char blogs at info-mational and will be the author of an issue of Library Technology Reports in 2010.

 
Char recently authored Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University (A Research Report), which examines one institution's attempt to modify its own technological and organizational makeup by better understanding its local users. Char places the story in the context of a thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis of academic library usage and technology patterns.
 
I had a chance to talk with Char about her work and the changes she sees coming in our libraries. Read More »